Reference Qualifiers are the best way to limit the available choices in your reference fields. The idea behind then is to allow you to select only those records that are useful in a given situation.
In this tutorial, we will provide a few use cases for this really powerful feature.
- Create an Invoice Selecting Only Opportunities with Closed Won Sales Stage
- Create a Deal for Contacts with Type Customers
Create an Invoice Selecting Only Opportunities with Closed Won Sales Stage
Let's say that you want to create an invoice. If you have to select the deal or opportunity for which you are generating the invoice wouldn't it be great if you could limit the options available to only show those Opportunities that you have actually won/closed? That is what Qualifiers are for.
To set up the above example, go to System Settings, then click on App Setup and there choose your Invoice app (it could have a different name according to your own configuration)
There create a Custom field of type Reference, then under Reference Objet select your Opportunities or Deals app. The next step is to select your qualifier. Since we want to show only the Closed won deals, the Sales Stage is our best choice. As for the Qualifier Value, Closed Won is exactly what we are looking for.
As you create your invoice, when you click on the Opportunity field, you will only see the Closed Won deals. This would make it easier for you to find the right one, without having to worry about selecting one that is not 'Closed Won'.
Create a Deal for Contacts with Type Customers
When you are creating a deal, you want to make sure that you add an actual customer to it and not a contact that is a supplier/provider. In that case, you need to create a Reference field in your Deals app to the contacts, adding the 'type' as the qualifier. Your Reference field configuration will have 'Contacts' as the Object, Contact type as the 'Reference Qualifier', and lastly, Customer as 'Qualifier Value'.
When you create your deal, on the customer field only those contacts that have the customer as type will be available in the list for you to choose from.